CANNABIS CULTURE – Did the Elizabethian Magicians Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelly use drugs for magick and scrying?

The Elizabethian mathematician, scientist, astrologer, astute business man, and magician Dr. John Dee (1527-1609), “had a famous ‘mirror’ by which he claimed to contact all manner of angels and dead spirits” (Dyer, 2010). Dee, had a variety of magic mirrors and crystals, a particular favourite was a flat obsidian stone, that is on display at the British Museum, and his scribe John Kelly “did all his feats upon The Devil’s Looking-glass, a stone…” (Butler, 1663). Zachary Grey commented on this verse, “This Kelly was chief seer… to Dr. Dee… and bred an apothecary, and was a good proficient in chemistry, and pretended to have the grand elixir (or philosopher’s stone) … He pretended to see apparitions in a chrystal or beryl looking-glass (or a round stone like a chrystal)” (Grey, 1806). The Sloane MS 3846 copy of Sepher Raziel, has been noted for its composition in handwriting similar to that of Dr. Dee’s scryer Edward Kelly, (Karr & Skinner, 2013).

At least two 16th century Grimoires that were in use in England at the time of Dr John Dee, prescribe cannabis for mirror scrying and to see spirits, ‘Sepher Raziel: Liber Salomonis’, and ‘The Book of Magic’, recently rereleased as ‘The Book of Oberon’, and we can be near certain that Dee would have been familiar with these manuscripts…..